Which still doesn't meet criteria imo unless they contribute to the greater cause of the community.

I think this naturally leads to people modifying these community contributions behind closed doors because they are easily available and most people believe they can make something better (more often worse) and sell it (not always the case but seems to be a point that pops up alot).

17 hours ago, Warmonger said:

If it's one thing that I have witnessed multiple times among different games is that once a source code base is put out there among the public, development communities die. Unless it's a vastly popular game with a bunch of people contributing to one specific code base. Everyone else is interested in just downloading the source and modifying it to their liking behind closed doors.

I think the current OpenKO repository is proof against this, at least for KO. People are more inclined to share their work if doing so is rewarded and doesn't result in someone else taking that work and trying to sell it or something like that. Unfortunately this isn't an easy problem to solve but encouraging more and more people to share helps combat this issue. Also when people share their work they shouldn't be paranoid to do so. If people are paranoid that someone else will get credit/money for their hard work we should just do a better job as a community to make people more aware. Granted the English community does not act in isolation and it's hard to get Turkish communities on board with this.

17 hours ago, Warmonger said:

Long story short, the aforementioned. If people prove themselves by submitting content and you feel as if they would fit in that group then you could add them.

This only issue with this is that it's still subjective. Although maybe there is no way around that? Like stated previously we could just pick one or two gate-keepers and problem solved.

All and all I think recognizing people for their work is important and somewhat secondary to whether or not a person should contribute. The second part is a much more complicated issue and it isn't clear whether the English community alone can prevent a lot of the shady stuff that goes on. However I believe we can do something to recognize those who take that leap of faith and offer up their hard work knowing others will likely use it however they like. Whether it's a group? or simply a badge? or a list of contributors posted somewhere? That's for us to discuss.

Indeed, there's been countless private servers started up by people who use work from others online to glue together a private server in the 8+ years that I have developed this and other games. It's like that for many games, people typically do it for a cash grab. Shut the server down a month later and then reopen it as if was some other new server entirely. So I understand that just because you own a server doesn't entitle you to any special privileges. Unless of course maybe you run the most successful server out there. Which still doesn't meet criteria imo unless they contribute to the greater cause of the community. I was going to say something similar along the lines of just creating the group and dropping people into it as they post and prove themselves. I also thought that such a group is not even necessary. I mean the community has activity but the creation of new content is scarce and this forum has been up for months now I presume? I feel like a specialized group would just be an incentive that would go unfulfilled. I mean what's the sense in having that recognition when there's not that much activity. If it's one thing that I have witnessed multiple times among different games is that once a source code base is put out there among the public, development communities die. Unless it's a vastly popular game with a bunch of people contributing to one specific code base. Everyone else is interested in just downloading the source and modifying it to their liking behind closed doors. That seems to of happened with KO ever since the initial base Twostars worked on was put out there and now we have all kinds of source spins from Turkish communities and others. The very same thing happened in LastChaos that I was developing a couple of years back, the official server source was hacked from the company and released to the open public. Not even a month later all public private development for that game perished. Which raises the question, how do you make the community more dynamic to pull in more activity. I personally think there's more to be thought about than just user groups.

Long story short, the aforementioned. If people prove themselves by submitting content and you feel as if they would fit in that group then you could add them.

All and all I think recognizing people for their work is important and somewhat secondary to whether or not a person should contribute. The second part is a much more complicated issue and it isn't clear whether the English community alone can prevent a lot of the shady stuff that goes on. However I believe we can do something to recognize those who take that leap of faith and offer up their hard work knowing others will likely use it however they like. Whether it's a group? or simply a badge? or a list of contributors posted somewhere? That's for us to discuss.

I agree on this one, I think there are some people which might contribute or already did contribute a fair amount of work / helpful information and for that they need to get some sort of recognition.

I don't think a list would be a good idea but a badge or a group sounds good in my opinion.

as @Adi said earlier, it doesn't necessarily mean contributors have to be releasing private server related content, any helpful content can be considered as a contribution in my opinion.